What is it about the phrase “in residence” that writers find so seductive? I mean, if you told the average bloke that he’d been awarded the privilege of spending a week in Heathrow, he probably wouldn’t coo or punch the air in exhilaration. But the philosopher Alain de Botton has been doing the media equivalent for the past month, enthusing at every opportunity about the thrill of being appointed the airport’s first writer-in-residence.

Similarly, if you told someone that — congratulations! — he had just earned the right to spend half a day a week for a year in a London Underground station, he probably wouldn’t react as if he’d just won The X Factor or been awarded a knighthood. But the writer John Simmons leapt at the opportunity to be writer-in-residence at King’s Cross Tube station for a year in 2006-07, and has written extensively about all the fun that he had. Indeed, the suffix “in residence” has been attached to everything from banks and bookshops to schools, universities, colleges, museums, prisons and young offender institutions, with writers in each case falling over themselves to participate. What on earth is the appeal?

It’s a question I’ve been pondering since I took up an invitation to be one of three writers-in-residence at The Times Cheltenham Literary Festival. And, of course, I accepted, in part because it is a prestigious literary gathering sponsored by the best newspaper in the world. But then again, if, as a news reporter, I had been told to spend ten days at any literary festival I would have groaned and tried to get out of it. The assignment also involves blogging, which is tedious as it essentially involves doing my job for nothing, and with many fewer readers.

Meanwhile, hanging out with other writers is a pain because it is always lowering to meet people doing something better than you and with more success; meeting readers is lowering because there are so few of them and they tend to ask the same questions. I’m also worried that the new plants I’ve bought for my roof terrace will wither in my absence, and part of the deal is that at the end of the festival I will give “an exclusive performance” of my “latest work”, which is a problem because this “latest work” doesn’t yet exist and I’ve been avoiding the tricky issue of a second book with my publisher and agent for some time.

That none of this prevented me from saying “yes” to the organisers says something about how much the term “in residence” resonates for writers and, if I had to explain it, I would say that its appeal is fourfold. First, income for most writers is so rare, so unreliable, that any promise of residence, in whatever location, is to be embraced. Second, being a “writer” is such a vague occupation — no membership of final salary pension schemes for us, or, for that matter, any watercoolers or meetings or free printing/ photocopiers/stationery or boss or colleagues or business cards or conferences or union gatherings or appraisals or office parties or PowerPoint presentations or clocking-in or clocking-out — that any offer of structure is also to be embraced. Frankly, anything that means you are less likely to waste days watching DVD box sets of Mad Men, or catching up with the UB40 back catalogue on Spotify, or attempting to spark conversations with your postman is a good thing.

Third, the phrase “in residence” has intrinsically glamorous associations. Thames Water could advertise for a writer in residence at its Mogden Sewage Treatment Works and the job title would still make me think of free champagne, clean sheets, minibars, plasma-screen tellies, power showers, saunas, valet parking and that Frank McCourt book that begins with thanks to the Savoy hotel, where he was writer-in-residence for a period. And, most profoundly, the phrase “in residence” seems to offer liberation from the two great curses of writing: loneliness and lack of inspiration.

It’s probably a total delusion. There’s no getting over the reality that writing is a solitary act, that you have to shut people away to do it, that being surrounded by brilliant, successful writers is enough to constipate anyone and that writing block can happen anywhere. But it’s too late to pull out, and you can keep up with my progress, or lack of it, on Twitter(I’m hoping that microblogging counts as “blogging”), and if, at the end of the week, I’m reading out UB40 lyrics, you’ll know it didn’t work out.

twitter.com/sathnam

Sathnam Sanghera and his fellow writers-in-residence perform their work, the Inkpot, Oct 18, 12pm. 0844 5767979; cheltenhamfestivals.com

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